


alpha serpentis

by Anonymous



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Almost quiet contemplation, Gen, Stargazing, Very awkward leaning hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:21:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27129167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: there are small ways in which unukalhai seeks home after the star sets.
Kudos: 8
Collections: Anonymous





	alpha serpentis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [illegible](https://archiveofourown.org/users/illegible/gifts).



The woman who is his death is veiled in shadow. Her face is a fresh wound, and below that a mouth curled in something he does not have a name for.

It is not contempt. It is not defiance. It is neither hope, nor despair.

She takes his life in a simple motion. He does not see the spell that does it, nor even the weapon to fire it. Only that she leaves, not by foot but by magic, a more controlled breaking apart. Then the world spins, stumbles, shivers, falls like his staff upon polished stone floors. He follows soon after.

What he can see of his reflection is pale. Violet eyes losing their glint, their focus, even as he wills it to remain. Hands that do not answer his command to hold his weight up, to curl in to ward away the cold.

A boot, of all things, interrupts his last musings. Clean, not one that had seen the battle outside, or anywhere else. Falling, along with the rest of a body, to kneel next to him. Pale and gilded. The surprise finishes stealing him away.

* * *

He wakes up, and he is Unukalhai.

He is not dying. He is not in those last moments. His breath comes fast, but he does not run out of it, and the dark of the halls is not from the end of days. Unukalhai’s own, or the end that he was fighting.

Still, he checks. Holds himself up with his own strength, with shaking arms. Presses a hand to his chest. Swings his legs over the stiff cot that he has been given, the rustle of his robes overly loud in the heavy silence.

It is never silent in his dreams. The figures parading through them are never clad in white, though fresh-blood masks are not uncommon.

There is no reason for his master to linger by the window. The mask he wears obfuscates the object of his attention, though the tilt of his head gives away that it is something in the skies. Starlight, perhaps. It is still new to Unukalhai, to have night skies lit with only pinpricks of radiance; his master perhaps finds it equally entrancing.

It is never still in his dreams either. And if he moves, Unukalhai can continue to break away from it, more certainly than just by waiting for his heart to still.

The first step has his master turn. The second has him comment that he is awake, that it is good. Then he falls silent, until Unukalhai is by his side, looking out from the window into a barren moon and a darkened sky.

“I hope I do not interrupt,” Unukalhai mumbles. He is aware he is unmasked now that he squints against the reflected light, the switch from nightmares to nightly gloom leaving him unprepared for the radiance. It is more kin to what rages- raged?- on in his world, somewhere beyond this carefully bounded vista. Spellfire racing over the floor, up walls made glassy, up bloodied limbs and crystalline hearts.

Elidibus sighs. “You did not. My duties include ensuring your wellbeing.”

“Will you return?”

Unukalhai does not specify where. Elidibus lets the silence linger, soaks in the noise that must certainly stain the white glow of the moon, the blurred stars overhead. 

“Not yet. The situation has not stabilized; as such, it is a risk that would be unreasonable to take if I also sought success.”

The silence falls again. The moonlight does not sting his eyes so much now. Nor does it try to steal into Unukalhai’s room beyond his body, and his master’s next to him. There is only one shadow, and yet it is wan and hazy, cast without much strength.

He does little enough with much strength.

The noise shifts to questions. To what would success mean, to would Elidibus take him, to would he want to see. Would he want to know, beyond the woman that was his death and he has heard, somehow, prowling the halls of the moon and wounded in truth.

Before he settles on one, Unukalhai lists to the side. Gilded spines slice overhead, glancing into pale hair, harmless all in all. Elidibus is only slightly warmer than the night air where Unukalhai rests against him. A rustle of fabric gives away another shift in focus that Unukalhai cannot see.

“Can we see it from here?”

Elidibus shifts his more distant arm to point towards some corner of the night sky. It is woefully nondescript, with barely any stars. That empty space is more to see than any pattern, perhaps, or maybe Elidibus sees something that Unukalhai does not.

“Only faintly. Its umbral aspect will obscure it from the naked eye, more so if you are unpracticed in seeking those aetherial imbalances. Yet it lingers still, alive.”

The description ends less severely than Unukalhai expects, or that he thinks Elidibus expects. It might relate to the needed focus. To something he does not know.

He finds sleep again, leaning on his master’s side.

* * *

Elidibus starts teaching him after Unukalhai has gotten three nights of steady sleep. None of them are against his arm again. He lets it be forgotten, a small moment of weakness, one of many. Unukalhai follows his lead.

He does not mention returning. He does not mention finding something else. Or someone else. Anyone else.

Unukalhai knows his star is the Thirteenth. Was the Thirteenth. Its umbral glow now doesn’t hide from his eyes, if he seeks it.

He doesn’t do so often. Elidibus makes no comment, save as pertains to their lessons. Unukalhai learns of balance, of magicks, of the ways of a world he does not know. Of the meaning under his death’s wailing, now he knows her name. Igeyorhm will seek redemption. Will seek to see the Thirteenth relit within some greater purpose.

* * *

“Will I have a task to do?”

Unukalhai asks after a lesson. They are long past simply seeking stars in the night sky, and into the intricacies involved in seeking aetherial balances. Nonetheless, it is a simple exercise, and Elidibus has impressed a need to master the basics of their trade.

The stars have fewer voices to pay heed to, so distant from them. Their aetherial charge is faint and dim. Their paths are slow, curving in precise motions even if they cannot be immediately seen. At the very edges of the moonlight, penumbra swallows the weaker sparks, only to release them again the next cycle.

“In time,” Elidibus replies, as measured as the stars. “When the need arises.”

There is something contradictory in his reply. Unukalhai cannot see the collision yet, but he feels it with certainty. An umbrally-aligned star, sinking into the spaces between the stars. A mage slipping through the chaos, through double doors and dark halls that did not expect a single, daring interloper.

“Will I be ready?”

His death had not been. He had not been, of course, but now he knows some of the nature of her wounds.

Elidibus keeps his silence. Inscrutable under his mask, Unukalhai still knows when the focus shifts to him. Then beyond, even if Elidibus is only watching him, watching the night sky.

“You will,” his master says. Almost startled, but there is nothing he says without meaning, Unukalhai thinks, and this would be an odd place to start. Nothing more is forthcoming.

The sound of fabric, of metal clinking together. The warmth and weight of an arm, rested around Unukalhai’s shoulders, and pulling him in slightly towards Elidibus’s body. His eyes are on the skies again, finding the densest star. Unukalhai finds that without the spines, it is rather comfortable to rest against Elidibus’s side. His master’s words come unfocused, as does the slight pressure of a bladed thumb rubbing the top of his arm. It is almost inviting him to rest again.

“You will. I will make sure of that.”


End file.
